An announcement this week on joint federal/provincial monitoring of the oil sands was delayed because of the death of Ralph Klein. The notion that there could ever be a program that satisfied critics would be naive even if joint monitoring weren’t beset by political infighting, and the industry’s most unhinged critics didn’t include some of Canada’s most prominent environmental scientists.

In his day job, Mr. Homer-Dixon peddles “global governance” at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. That’s the theory that socialism — which has always and everywhere failed at the national level — needs to be taken global to fulfill its potential. Given that catastrophic man-made climate change is perhaps the chief justification for this attempted planetary power grab, one can hardly expect objectivity from Mr. Homer-Dixon, who embraces a range of related lousy ideas, from zero-growth societies (in which innovation would presumably be outlawed) to a desperate last-ditch defence of peak oil theory.

You will also remember the name Balsillie. He’s the guy who co-ran, then co-screwed up, RIM (now BlackBerry). Perhaps if he’d spent less time supporting ever-fashionable anti-capitalism, BlackBerry would today be in better shape.

Mr. Homer-Dixon doesn’t just regurgitate greatly exaggerated claims about the oil sands, he attempts to present development as a threat not only to the Canadian economy but Canadian democracy.

His writes that “tar sands production is one of the world’s most environmentally damaging activities. It wrecks vast areas of boreal forest through surface mining and subsurface production. It sucks up huge quantities of water from local rivers, turns it into toxic waste and dumps the contaminated water into tailing ponds that now cover nearly 70 square miles.”

Let’s start with that all that wrecking and sucking. The proportion of the Canadian boreal forest that will be disturbed by the oil sands over 40 years is 0.02%. That land has to be returned to nature. As for sucking up “huge quantities of water,” oil sands operations divert around 2% of the flow of the Athabasca River, and companies are increasingly using recycled water in their operations. When it comes to tailings ponds, as long as they don’t leak, and wildlife is protected, they are a technical problem to which the industry is devoting billions.

Mr. Homer-Dixon regurgitates the thoroughly discredited notion of “Dutch disease,” that oil sands development has driven up the Canadian dollar and thus led to economic unbalance, at the expense of Ontario. It’s easy to see why he would ascribe to this theory rather than acknowledge the impact of Dalton McGuinty’s fiscal imprudence and lousy green energy policies, another key plank of the sustainable governance agenda.

He alleges that Canada is turning into a “petro-state,” presumably to be compared with the likes of Saudi Arabia or Nigeria, but total oil and gas production accounts for less than 5% of Canada’s GDP. This makes his claim that the oil sands is sucking up both investment and R&D from the rest of the economy look as warped as his claims about water. Did RIM stumble because its best brains headed to Fort McMurray?

Mr. Homer-Dixon claims that the oil sands are “undermining Canadian democracy.… By suggesting that anyone who questions the industry is unpatriotic, tar sands interest groups have made the industry the third rail of Canadian politics.” He also suggests that “the cabinet and the Conservative parliamentary caucus are heavily populated by politicians who deny mainstream climate science.”

Perhaps, while he is forwarding the names of those industry patriots, he could also send us a list of Conservative climate skeptics. Stephen Harper dared to observe — before he came to power — that climate change was a “socialist scheme” (bang on!). Since then, few if any industry figures or politicians have expressed a trace of skepticism, for fear of rabid NDP/NGO whack-a-moles. Perhaps Mr. Homer-Dixon would also care to weigh in on the (latest) piece of climate science skulduggery (and its instant transmission by a crusading media) that was deconstructed by Ross McKitrick on this page on Tuesday.

And when did the Conservatives “slash” financing for climate science? According to Environment Minister Peter Kent’s office, the only expenditure reductions directly related to climate were those that shed duplication in conjunction with the repeal of Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act: a barmy Liberal scheme to force the government to commit economic suicide. No climate scientists have lost their jobs.

Mr. Homer-Dixon attacks Resources Minister Joe Oliver for fingering radical foreign-funded groups (which are an undeniable fact) and suggests that tightening up on charities is aimed at oil sands opponents. In fact, tightening is aimed at preventing tax-exempt groups from engaging in job-destroying political activities that are clearly disallowed by the rules.

To claim that “This coercive climate prevents Canadians from having an open conversation about the tar sands” is hooey. Indeed, Mr. Homer-Dixon makes clear that he has no interest in conversing with anybody. He wants the oil sands stopped. He quotes Canadian opposition to Keystone, but fails to note that the poll he cites indicated marginally more support for it. (A Pew poll this week revealed 66% support for Keystone XL versus 23% opposition).

Meanwhile, it is his fellows in the anti-oil sands cabal — such as David “I am not an economist” Suzuki and uber-alarmist James Hansen (who left NASA this week to devote himself to spreading climate scares full time) — who have suggested on numerous occasions that skeptics should be silenced.

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